Sheila Buck, arrested at Tulsa Trump rally, tells her story

More than four years after she was arrested while praying in the middle of a Tulsa street prior to one of then-President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, Sheila Buck still gets upset when she thinks about the incident.

“I can’t believe they did that,” Buck said in a Tulsa World interview. “I can’t believe I was arrested.”

A Tulsa County District Court jury last week found Buck not guilty of obstructing a police officer, a misdemeanor crime that carried a jail term of up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Police jailed her prior to the Trump rally after campaign officials objected to a message on a shirt she was wearing and she refused to change it or leave the area.

After four years of hard-fought litigation from both sides — including two appeals to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals — a jury determined the state did not prove its case regarding Buck’s actions on June 20, 2020.

Buck said she has no regrets for her actions that day and was somewhat confident in her belief that her actions were protected legally.

“They stomped on my constitutional First Amendment rights,” Buck said of the city of Tulsa.

Looking back, Buck said this week she was initially just curious on that June day about all the hubbub going on downtown.

A lot was going on in Tulsa and elsewhere.

A Juneteenth celebration was continuing for a second day in Greenwood.

The National Guard had been deployed downtown to help keep the peace as protesters and counter-protesters began gathering in anticipation of then-President Donald Trump’s campaign rally scheduled for later that evening.

An armored law enforcement vehicle was positioned downtown, as well.

Loud music was booming everywhere downtown.

A rally against hate was being held nearby, in what’s now called Dream Keepers Park.

George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman less than one month earlier was still drawing Black Lives Matter protests and counter-protests in Tulsa and other cities.

And all of this was occurring against the COVID-19 pandemic that refused to go away. Nearly 2,000 already had been infected with the virus within three months of it appearing in Tulsa County, 64 of whom had died, records from that time show.

Even popular culture seemed to be zeroing in on Tulsa. The HBO series “Watchmen,” which featured a masked Tulsa police detective fighting racial violence in an alternate history, had just wrapped up six months earlier.

Buck said while she did obtain a ticket to see the rally, she really had no intention of attending. Still, she was curious.

“So I thought OK, let me see what bands are performing,” Buck recalled. “Let me see what kind of concessions there are. I was really just curious what a Trump rally was like or what any presidential rally was like. I’d never been to one.”

Around 11 a.m., after hearing music outside her apartment unit at Fourth and Main streets for a while, Buck said she donned a COVID mask and all-black attire and exited her apartment. She had recently finished viewing “Watchmen,” and her look was inspired by Sister Knight, the masked Tulsa police detective in the series. A noteworthy difference: Buck wore a black T-shirt with a white silhouette of Floyd and the police officer kneeling on his neck along with the phrase “I Can’t Breathe,” some of Floyd’s last words.

Buck said during her career as an elementary school teacher, much of which occurred at north Tulsa schools, she saw a difference in the way minorities were treated by society.

“What I saw teaching in north Tulsa and disadvantaged youth changed my life,” Buck said.

“I saw how they were treated on a daily basis,” Buck said. “I saw how they were treated if I took them on field trips and things like this.

“Also in later years when I followed my students, I felt like they were unfairly treated in the judicial system.”

Buck said she intended to attend some of the Juneteenth festivities in Greenwood but first opted to check out what was going on near the BOK Center, where Trump would speak to supporters later that evening.

“The moment I stepped out of the door, I started getting odd looks,” Buck recalled. “But everybody was in weird costumes. I just walked down the street.

“I certainly didn’t go down there planning to pray, but I couldn’t believe the hatred, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“The crowds and everything I heard — it was surreal,” Buck said. “Like I was in the twilight zone.”

Buck said she first felt compelled to pray in front of the armored vehicle near her apartment.

“I just got in the middle of the street in front of the tank, and I got down on my knees and prayed,” Buck said.

After praying, Buck said she stood and walked toward the BOK Center.

Buck said she followed others as they entered a fenced area installed near Fourth and Cheyenne streets in advance of the rally.

She said she showed her ticket to entry staff, who just waved her inside and said it wasn’t needed there.

“So I have gone through the first barrier,” Buck recalled, “and I was walking and two men come up to me and they are in gray and they told me I needed to (change the shirt or leave). … I didn’t understand why, and I said no, I wasn’t going to change my shirt.”

That’s when Buck said she decided to sit down in the middle of Fourth and Cheyenne streets and pray.

“I was praying just because I couldn’t believe the hatred and everything that I was hearing,” Buck said.

She said she prayed for about 10 minutes before a reserve officer for Tulsa Police Department, Matthew Parker, approached her.

Parker would go on to arrest Buck after she refused his command to leave the area or be jailed.

Four years later, a jury on Tuesday decided Buck did not obstruct the reserve officer as Tulsa County prosecutors had claimed.

“I knew what I was doing was the right thing to do,” Buck said. “I decided at that point that what I was standing up for was the First Amendment and the Constitution and the lives of Black people and Black Lives Matter. … I thought somebody needs to be a voice for the other side.”

At the jail, she said an officer asked her if she taught her students “this propaganda.”

“Then he looked at me and said ‘You know, I meet people like you all the time, and I don’t understand where you are coming from,’” Buck said.

“And I remember looking back at him in there and saying ‘Yeah, I know. I feel the same way about you and what you are doing,’” Buck said.

After her release from jail, things got worse for Buck.

“I was receiving death threats and also a lot of the parents at the school (where she taught) did not agree,” Buck said. “They believed I was taking a political stand and they did not believe in what I did.”

“I really was shocked that this was an issue because to me it was so plain, you know, that my constitutional rights were being violated,” Buck said.

Buck said she left her teaching job and moved out of state.

“I had to leave a town and a job that I loved and try to start over,” Buck said. “I was shocked at how difficult they made it for me to teach and to carry on.”

Buck said she received words of support from the ACLU and some celebrities, including former NFL quarterback-turned civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick.

She hopes now with the criminal case behind her that she can find a job and resume teaching.

“I don’t have a criminal arrest on my record now, so I feel like I can go maybe work with children again and not have this criminal arrest show up on my background check,” Buck said.

Despite the ordeal, Buck said she has no regrets.

“Yes, I’m sorry it happened and I had to leave a town I loved and planned on living my life there and I had to leave a home and friends, a job that I loved,” Buck said. “But I do feel like it was an important thing that I was standing up for. I know I wasn’t doing anything wrong. And I truly know they had no right to arrest me.”

Buck’s civil rights lawsuit against the city of Tulsa is still pending in Tulsa federal court.